Today marks the end of my term as Instructional Design intern at City Tech’s library. It’s been a fun and rewarding internship where I got to ask meaningful questions, create cool tools, and work in a supportive and collaborative environment. Even though I technically won’t be a part of the library community anymore, my work here is far from over. In fact, the tools that I worked on during this semester are only at the beginning of their life and will continue to grow and change over time.
We successfully conducted a usability test for the redesign of our LibGuides during the Fall 2016 semester. We tested two versions of prototypes and gathered feedback through interviews. The data that we synthesized was then used to draft a template for creating future LibGuides. We intend to build this new template over the summer so faculty will be able to utilize the guidelines we established through our research.
We also began creating new multimedia tutorials on how to use library resources. We discovered that students responded favorably to multimedia in our user studies, so we decided it would be advantageous to create a suite of videos and slideshows. We scripted and designed two bite sized lessons (under three minutes long) on how to read a bibliographic record and determining what is an academic resource. During the middle of the semester we collaborated with students studying production and film editing to create a video trailer for the library. Hopefully this sort of interdepartmental collaboration will lead to a larger pool of resources. These projects are only the beginning of a larger commitment to providing the learning community with access to quality learning experiences.
It’s been fun creating with you all!
Winter
News from the City Tech Library
